WASHINGTON - Today the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals issued the first opinion by a federal circuit court classifying Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients as illegal aliens. The court’s opinion, which closely tracks a friend-of-the-court brief that the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) had filed in the case, makes clear that DACA recipients are “inadmissible and thus removable” under federal law. According to the Court, their deportation has merely been “reprieved” by an Obama-era policy that “encouraged” government officials to “exercise prosecutorial discretion and focus on higher-priority cases.”

In 2016, several DACA recipients sued the Georgia higher education system, which bars aliens who are not “lawfully present” from enrolling in selective state colleges and universities, even if they otherwise qualify for admission. The students argued that they were lawfully present under federal law, which preempted state law. They also claimed that the admissions bar violated their right to equal protection, as Georgia treats aliens who are paroled into the U.S. or granted asylum as lawfully present.

The Eleventh Circuit rejected all of the students’ claims. In its brief to the court, IRLI had exhaustively shown that DACA recipients do not have “lawful presence” as defined anywhere in the Immigration and Nationality Act. The court agreed, finding that Georgia’s determination that they lacked lawful presence tracked federal law. And because the court held that DACA recipients are not lawfully present, but are illegal aliens, it did not apply “strict scrutiny” to Georgia’s admissions policy under the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution. Instead, the court upheld the policy as rationally related to a legitimate state interest.

“This is an important decision,” said Dale L. Wilcox, executive director and general counsel of IRLI. “On many fronts, open borders legal groups have been using DACA recipients to try to blur the distinctions between citizen and noncitizen and between legal aliens and illegal aliens. In blurring those distinctions, they blur the very border of our country, and begin rubbing out the notion that the United States is fully a sovereign nation. Today’s decision is a major check on that effort, and I expect it will reverberate across the national legal landscape.”

WASHINGTON – Last Friday, three Congressmen � Congressman Steve King of IIowa, and Congressmen Andy Biggs and Paul A. Gosar, both of Arizona – filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas, which is hearing a case brought by Texas and seven other states and two governors to have the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program declared unconstitutional. The Congressmen are represented in this effort by the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI), which drafted the brief.

At issue is a motion to dismiss the case made by a group of Mexican nationals and others represented by the Mexican-American Education & Legal Defense Fund (MALDEF), an open-borders activist group. MALDEF’s clients were allowed to intervene in the case because the defendants, the United States and federal officials, agree with the plaintiffs that DACA is unconstitutional.

Now MALDEF claims the case should not go forward at all. Its main argument is that federal district courts in other parts of the country have blocked the Trump Administration’s rescission of DACA, and thus DACA cannot be struck down by the court in this case. As IRLI points out in its brief, however, whether DACA can be rescinded is a separate question from whether it was unconstitutional to begin with. If it were unconstitutional to begin with, blocking its rescission would not reinstate it, but rather reinstate the last lawful state of affairs � that is, the situation pre-DACA.>

“It’s clear why MALDEF, with its open-borders agenda, wants this suit to go away,” commented Dale L. Wilcox, executive director and general counsel of IRLI. “A victory here for Texas probably would be upheld by the Supreme Court, and DACA would be no more, rescission or no rescission. To try to stop that they’ll make any argument, even the mind-bending claim that, because a ruling by this court that DACA has never been lawful would change the effect of other courts’ rescission rulings, this court can’t take that step.”

The case is being heard by U.S. District Judge Andrew S. Hanen. In 2015, Judge Hanen struck down the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (“DAPA”) program, which would have granted amnesty to 4 million illegal aliens and included an expanded version of DACA. Both the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and (in a 4-4 ruling) the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Judge Hanen’s DAPA decision.

Democrats and allies rail against “breaking a promise” to DACA recipients who, they say, were led to believe they’d be shielded from deportation indefinitely, allowed to work and benefit from all public services. Beaverton Mayor Denny Doyle argues at length how “unfair” it is to “pull the rug out from under them.”

But Pres. Obama said repeatedly that he had no Constitutional authority to provide an amnesty, and he made plain that DACA was a temporary program – subject to change or termination by future Administrations.

Dreamers are portrayed in the media sympathetically, with glowing reports about the valedictorians and other achievers. We’re not supposed to notice the criminals among them. However, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said that just this year, 622 have had their deferred action status pulled due to criminal activity, a 30% surge over previous years.

Any illegal alien is eligible for DACA if when illegally entering the U.S., he/she was under the age of 31 as of June 15, 2012, so the eligibility group consists mainly of adults, not children.

How can the date of entry be proven without expensive investigation? So, applications were accepted without proper verification or interviews. There likely is widespread fraud.

Most people don’t realize the consequences of mass amnesties. Each immigrant can petition to bring in extended family members, and each one of those can then petition to bring in his or her family members in an endless chain. While Oregon and other states are struggling to keep up with population growth’s effects, we should not be adding millions more people through overly generous immigration policies.

PolitiFact erred in claiming that amnesty for DACA recipients would not result in a huge wave of extended family immigrants, because that estimate was based on the number of persons currently enrolled in DACA. However, the proposal is to amnesty all who are DACA-eligible, a much larger number, estimated to be 1.76 million. Statistics show that each new immigrant in recent years has sponsored an average of 3.45 additional immigrants. In the most recent five-year cohort of immigrants studied (1996-2000), each new Mexican immigrant sponsored 6.38 additional legal immigrants.

The parents of DACA “children” brought them here illegally; the entire family illegally here should be deported together, thus not “tearing families apart.”

Illegal immigration enables employers to get cheap, exploitable labor, reducing job opportunities for citizens and depressing their wages, leading to greater need for financial assistance to poor families, homelessness and desperation among citizens. Nearly one-in-four Americans of working-age does not have a job, according to government data.

The worst thing to do in the present situation is to pass yet another amnesty for illegal aliens. Rolling amnesties over recent decades have undermined respect for immigration law and all law generally. Americans’ historic respect for law is what enabled the U.S. to achieve the prosperity, cohesion, and stability that set us apart from many other countries.

The DACA “youths,” now many in their 30’s, should return to the countries where they are citizens and help those countries develop acceptable living conditions.

“I told myself that even if people reject me or deny me things, I will still do my best to uphold the values of this country. I would like to help this nation be better because it gave me so many opportunities and helped me see the world in a different way,” Nicolas said. “Right now, it’s hard because I love this country. It’s just so bittersweet. My emotions are mixed.”

In August 2012, two months after graduating from McNary High School, Nicolas enrolled in a then-new program, called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), authorized through executive action by President Barack Obama. DACA did not confer or create a path to citizenship for undocumented children brought to the United States before their 16th birthdays, but it was a huge shift for Nicolas. At age 11, he walked across a desert hand-in-hand with his mother, through a barbed wire fence and into the United States.

In exchange for registering under DACA, the federal government agreed not to deport Nicolas and allowed him to apply for a renewable two-year work permit. The permit came with a social security number that meant he could be paid above-the-table and enjoy the protections afforded other American workers.

“I was excited about the things I could do like being able to go to college, being able to drive, being able to travel within the United States, being able to contribute and really get involved. I felt empowered to basically have no obstacles,” Nicolas said.

Last week, President Donald Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions slapped an expiration date on Nicolas’ American dreams. DACA privileges will be rescinded for Nicolas and 800,000 other undocumented youths, collectively known as Dreamers, registered through the program. Their best hope now is Congress coming up with an alternative by March 5, 2018. In the wake of the action by the Trump administration, Oregon joined 14 other states and the District of Columbia in a lawsuit to block the termination of the program. Another suit to stop the DACA wind down was filed by three additional states on Monday, Sept. 11.

While those lawsuits travel through the judicial system, Nicolas and his younger brother and sister, who are also registered through DACA, are recalibrating their plans.

Last year, Nicolas decided to take time off from earning his degree at the University of Oregon to focus on saving money if Trump’s campaign promises to end DACA ever came to fruition. With some of the money he and his brother were socking away, they planned to purchase their father a new car, maybe even a new home for their parents. His family sold their car to afford the fees and attorney costs associated with Hugo’s initial DACA application.

“All that’s kind of on-hold now,” Nicolas said.

But, truthfully, the impact of Trump’s words began having an effect on Nicolas long before it was announced DACA would be rescinded.

“I feel like he is trying to paint a picture of immigrants as bad people who are only bringing crime and other problems. It’s totally the opposite of what we have done with deferred action,” Nicolas said. Nicolas is currently working as a personal banker with plans to start earning his investment licenses this month. “It has also made me pay more attention to the announcements coming from the administration every week. I have to be aware and more careful with all the changes that are happening.”

Between the president’s words and actions and the vocal support of both from his fans, Nicolas finds himself questioning how others view him and more driven to tell his story, the crux of which is in that middle school vow.

Even then, Nicolas wanted to go to college. He had his sights on a military or Ivy League school. His undocumented status would have stood in the way of both.

“Thinking about college in high school was depressing and I felt so ashamed,” he said. Still, he wanted to prove his value.

At McNary, Nicolas was a star pupil and an athlete. If there was a project that needed volunteers, he would usually be found on the site. He was a Keizer Fire District Explorer, a Keizer Police Department Cadet, and even served as the youth councilor to the Keizer City Council.

“Being undocumented, there is risk in everything you do – even if you are doing something good,” Nicolas said.

It was the last post, in 2012, where things began to unravel a bit. Near the end of his year as youth councilor, someone alerted the city council to Nicolas’ undocumented status. It prompted councilors to propose a policy change that would bar non-citizens from taking on the youth councilor position. Despite public outcry in council chambers, the “Hugo Rule” was approved. The rule still stands, but was tweaked for exchange students to be part of the youth councilor program.

Once he registered for Deferred Action, the college door swung open. He started taking classes at Chemeketa while working three jobs, eventually transferring to the University of Oregon.

“I could finally stand up and show what I could do if people allowed me that opportunity. I also knew that I was following a procedure and didn’t have to worry about what would happen tomorrow,” he said.

Nicolas is altering some of his plans, but he is also feeling a renewed sense of purpose. He bristles at the language used by Trump and Sessions when talking about immigrants.

“The way Jeff Sessions talked about Dreamers made us sound like criminals and not contributing. We’re teachers and nurses and attorneys and bankers. If someone needs representation and can’t afford it or needs tuition assistance, there is a whole group that chips in to help support them,” he said.

He is reconsidering his plans for taking a year off school with the notion that finishing his education is it’s own form of rebelling against the labels some would stick on him.

Deferred Action recipients have also found resilience in numbers.

“We’re more politically involved than we were and we’ve become more united because we can travel and learn from each other,” he said.

For those who want to help prevent DACA from winding down, Nicolas said there are two ways to act locally. First, contact Oregon Rep. Greg Walden, and tell him you support the Dreamers. Oregon’s other representatives and senators have already voiced their support.

The second is more personal and, potentially, more of a challenge: be vocal in your support of Dreamers wherever you go.

“When Trump is saying things about immigrants that are not true, it makes me hold back more because I don’t know if that’s the way people really see me,” he said. “When I see someone who never supported immigration reform now offering encouragement, that means everything.”

Despite his pledge to #forgottenAmericans, @realDonaldTrump has issued more than 100,000 work permits to foreign workers in U.S. illegally.

Last night, his administration expressed its intention to issue more.

Three days ago, acting ICE director, Thomas D. Homan told the House Appropriations committee that regarding enforcement, "no population is off the table" and deportation orders would no longer be ignored. "I don't know where else in the American justice system any other agency is told to ignore a judge's ruling," he said.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration continues to implement the active executive amnesty. Last month, Trump's nominee to lead U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services told Congress he expected the Trump administration to continue to issue work permits through DACA:

"I'm aware that both the president and Secretary Kelly have stated publicly and reiterated that the DACA program is to remain in place...

"...If confirmed, I would see my role to administer that program well, as it stands."

In his inauguration speech, @realDonaldTrump pledged that "Every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs will be made to benefit American workers and American families."

Two of every 5 Millennials of all ethnicities under age 30 with no college degree have no job of any kind. But Trump and Obama's DACA program grants work permits to people in the U.S. illegally who came to the U.S. before age 16 and were born after June 14, 1981.

Politico reports:

"One prominent Democrat said he'd extracted a promise not to alter the current protections for so-called Dreamers.

"'I'm grateful that President Trump has decided to keep the DACA program in place,' Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois said on the Senate floor Thursday. 'Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Nominee Francis Cissna have promised me personally and publicly that they will maintain the existing guidelines for the DACA program. I appreciate the commitment and intend to hold them to it.'

"Since Trump took office, renewal of expiring DACA permits appears to have continued as normal. More than 17,000 new approvals took place between January and March and more than 107,000 existing DACA recipients had their work permits renewed for an additional two years."

An Obama-era immigration program intended to protect parents of U.S. citizens and legal residents from deportation has been formally cancelled, fulfilling a key campaign promise from President Trump, the Homeland Security Department announced late Thursday.

Homeland Security John Kelly formally revoked a policy memo that created the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans program...

The program to protect parents was announced by President Obama in November 2014 but was never fully launched because it was blocked by a federal court, according to Reuters.

It was intended to keep the immigrant parents safe from deportation and provide them with a renewable work permit good for two years, but it was blocked by a federal judge in Texas...

Republicans decried the effort as “backdoor amnesty” and argued that Obama overstepped his authority...

The protection program for parents, like the one for young immigrants, was created with a policy memo during the Obama administration...

Revoking the memo and ending the stalled program fulfill a key campaign promise by Trump....

...As of March 31, about 787,000 young immigrants have been approved for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, according to government data.

Arrests of immigrants in the interior of the country have increased under the Trump administration, but deportations are slightly down as fewer people have been caught crossing the Mexican border into the United States illegally.

Trump has made immigration enforcement a top priority and has vowed to continue a crackdown...

Reuters reported that Trump previously said that his administration was considering different options.

“They shouldn’t be very worried,” Trump told ABC News in January, referring to DACA recipients. “I do have a big heart.

Mark your calendar and invite a friend to join you Saturday, June 24th at 2:00pm for OFIR's next meeting at the Best Western Mill Creek Inn, across from Costco in Salem, OR.

Things are heating up in the Oregon Legislature as time is running short and so many things are yet unresolved. OFIR has invited Representatives Greg Barreto and Mike Nearman to join us. Your questions are welcome and encouraged as time allows!

Initiative Petition #22 - to overturn Oregon's Sanctuary Statute ORS 181A.820 is now in the hands of the Attorney General, awaiting a ballot title. Perhaps by meeting day, we will have a ballot title.

OFIR has been closely monitoring HB 3464 and it's particularly troubling legislation. Read the press release. The bill has now advanced to the House Floor and OFIR members are encouraged to phone or email their Representatives and encourage them to vote no on this terrible bill.

As usual, our agenda is packed with the most up-to-date information regarding recent immigration issues here in Oregon and across the country.

Illegal immigrants should be living in fear of being deported, the chief of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said Tuesday, pushing back against a growing sentiment among Democrats on Capitol Hill and activists across the country who have complained about agents enforcing the laws on the books.

Thomas D. Homan, acting director at ICE, said anyone in the country without authorization can be arrested and those who have been ordered deported by judges must be removed if laws are to have meaning.

His comments marked a major shift for an agency that President Obama forbade from enforcing the law when it came to more than 9 million of the country's estimated 11 million illegal immigrants. Unshackled from Mr. Obama's strictures, agents have dramatically increased the number of arrests.

Advocacy groups are enraged and demand leniency for traumatized immigrants.

Mr. Homan makes no apologies. "If you're in this country illegally and you committed a crime by being in this country, you should be uncomfortable, you should look over your shoulder. You need to be worried,  Mr. Homan testified to the House Appropriations Committee. No population is off the table."

The Trump administration is asking for significant boosts in spending for both border and interior enforcement, but it is meeting resistance from Democrats who oppose a crackdown. Democrats will not accept a penny of funding for a new deportation force or a border wall,â€ said Rep. Nita M. Lowey of New York, the ranking Democrat on the committee.

Border Patrol acting Chief Carla Provost defended the 74 miles of fencing that President Trump wants to erect next year, saying the wall will plug holes where illegal activity is still a problem in San Diego and parts of Texas.

She said the southwestern border is at medium risk of penetration and needs the wall to assist. She said construction on the 74 miles would start in either March or April.

Mr. Homan, meanwhile, said he needs a major infusion of detention beds to hold the larger population of illegal immigrants, now that his agents have been unshackled from the restrictions under Mr. Obama.

He said the number of countries refusing to take back their deportees has been cut in half, while the number of jurisdictions looking to have their police and sheriff's deputies trained to process illegal immigrants in their jails has nearly doubled and will likely triple by the end of the year.

In addition, some 400,000 illegal immigrants ordered removed by judges but who were ignored under the Obama administration are now back on the list of priorities.

All of that means more illegal immigrants to be detained in preparation for deportation.

Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger, Maryland Democrat, told Mr. Homan not to try deporting drunken drivers. DWI or traffic is not really considered to be the type of people that are hurting our country, he said.

Mr. Homan, though, said drunken driving sounds like a public safety risk. "They should be removed," he said.

Mr. Homan said anyone in the country without authorization is a target for enforcement. "We shouldn't wait for them to become a criminal," he said.

That angered immigrant rights advocates, who said it showed antipathy toward illegal immigrants.

"Wow. How revealing," said Frank Sharry, executive director at America's Voice. "Homan makes it clear that the ICE strategy is to indiscriminately target the entire undocumented population in America and to intentionally spread fear throughout millions of deeply rooted families." He called Mr. Homan's testimony extremist.

Mr. Homan pushed back against such criticism. He said his agents are enforcing the laws as written and no other branch of law enforcement faces the abusive questions his employees do.

He said the illegal immigrants deserve the blame for separating families. When a U.S. citizen commits a crime and goes to jail, he said, the police who catch him aren't blamed for keeping him from his family.

Mr. Homan said the increased risk of enforcement is part of the reason illegal immigration across the southwestern border is at its lowest level in decades.

Democrats, though, said his officers need to show more discretion.

Ms. Lowey raised the case of a 19-year-old man in New York who was arrested on the day of his high school prom, which she said sent the wrong signal.

She said the man had kept out of trouble and was arrested while waiting at a bus stop for school.

Mr. Homen defended the arrest as valid. He said the young man committed a crime when he sneaked across the border and ignored an immigration judge's order to be removed.

"He lost his case, and because we don't like the results of that case we forget about it?'  Mr. Homan asked Ms. Lowey. "I don't know where else in the American justice system any other agency is told to ignore a judge's ruling."

Oregonians for Immigration Reform, an organization that calls for an end to illegal immigration, will host the Center for Immigration Studies policy director in its general membership meeting this Saturday.

Cynthia Kendoll, president of OFIR, said the designation by the Southern Poverty Law Center "means nothing to me. I think that any time a group is being successful and is making good points and providing education, they’re designated as a hate group.

"I think SPLC has gone off the rails."

Kendoll, who met Vaughan while attending a tour of the United States-Mexico border as part of the El Paso National Sheriff's Border School, said the hate group designation proves CIS is doing useful work and should be considered a "badge of honor."

"It's particularly troubling because we see a rise in hate crimes here in Oregon with the hateful rhetoric that they and Trump have publicly stated," said Andrea Williams, executive director of immigrant rights organization Causa Oregon.

Kendoll said OFIR is commonly referred to as an anti-immigrant group as well, but said that moniker doesn't describe the organization's values and objectives.

Instead, Kendoll said, OFIR is concerned about the consequences of legal and illegal immigration. OFIR's focus has shifted from its initial focus of "unfettered, unchecked" immigration and its impact on issues like traffic, urban sprawl and water usage, and expanded its scope to include impacts on issues like crime, school overcrowding and use of entitlement programs.

She said OFIR is nonpartisan its goal to explore immigration's impacts, and it invites speakers of different backgrounds to speak at membership meetings.

"We're not policy setters. All we're doing is simply giving people the opportunity to learn about what's going on," Kendoll said.

One of OFIR's more high-profile guests, Kendoll said, was former sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, Joe Arpaio.